Crock Pot Bourbon Chicken is easy and delicious! Tender juicy chicken is cooked in a rich bourbon ginger sauce for a delicious meal. The whole family will love it. Serve it over rice, with a side of steamed broccoli, or inside some dinner rolls for a delicious bourbon chicken sandwich!
This Crock Pot bourbon chicken recipe takes all the work out of making dinner, making it perfect for busy weeknights. We love coming home to fall-apart, flavorful and tender chicken. It’s great just about any way you serve it!
Bourbon Chicken
Bourbon chicken received its name because it was created by a Chinese cook who worked in a restaurant on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Regardless of the name or how it came to be, this dish is absolutely delicious! This recipe creates a sweet and tender chicken that is perfect served over rice and it’s easy to make at home in the slow cooker!
The bourbon chicken sauce takes just a few minutes of prep the marinade and then it simmers in the slow cooker all day! The result is insanely tender chicken with a sweet Asian inspired sauce and lots of flavor.
How To Make Bourbon Chicken
To make this Crock Pot bourbon chicken:
- Combine sauce ingredients together and pour over chicken thighs.
- Turn the Slow Cooker to HIGH for 3 hours or LOW for 6-7 hours.
- Shred the chicken and create a cornstarch slurry to thicken the sauce.
A few notes about this recipe… this dish is sweet as Bourbon chicken is a sweet dish (similar to sweet and sour). Do not use light soy sauce, the results and flavor are not the same. Chicken thighs are best in this recipe as they won’t dry out like slow cooked chicken breasts sometimes do!
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- Slow Cooker Chicken Chili – so easy
- Crock Pot BBQ Chicken – juicy shredded chicken!
Did you enjoy this Crock Pot Bourbon Chicken? Be sure to leave a rating and a comment below!
Equipment
Ingredients
- 3 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs
- 3 tablespoons cornstarch
- ¼ cup sliced green onions or more to taste
Sauce
- ½ teaspoon grated fresh ginger
- 4 cloves garlic minced
- ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
- ⅓ cup apple juice
- 1 ½ tablespoons honey
- ¼ cup brown sugar
- ¼ cup ketchup
- 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
- ¼ cup water
- ¼ cup Bourbon
- ¼ cup soy sauce
- salt and black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Mix all sauce ingredients in a small bowl.
- Place chicken in slow cooker, pour sauce over top. Cover and cook on low 6-7 hours or on high 3 hours.
- Remove chicken and chop into bite sized pieces and cover to keep warm.
- Meanwhile, combine 3 tablespoons water with cornstarch. Turn slow cooker up to high. Whisk cornstarch slurry into the sauce. Cover and allow to thicken, stirring occasionally (about 10 minutes). Stir chicken back into the sauce and add in green onions.
- Serve over rice.
Video
Notes
Nutrition Information
Nutrition information provided is an estimate and will vary based on cooking methods and brands of ingredients used.
Course Dinner
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Think it would be ok to marinade the chicken in the sauce for a day beforehand? Or even to cut up the chicken before cooking?
Hi Meredith, I would recommend preparing the sauce the night before and pour over the chicken when adding to the crockpot. You could slice up the chicken but I would check it sooner since you won’t need to cook it for quite as long.
I made this as the recipe stated but decreased the brown sugar by a tablespoon and used Lite soy sauce. I used Jim Beam bourbon. It was perfect as far as sweetness and glad I used Lite soy sauce, but the kids weren’t fans of this dish. I ate it and my husband ate it. I asked my husband if it tasted like bourban chicken and he said no, not at all. Maybe I’ll try Jack Daniels bourban next time to see if it tastes any better. It was ok, the cornstarch made it thicker which made a very nice sauce.
How does it come out without apple juice? It’s currently in my crockpot on high right now. Trying to figure out if it will come out okay and good or if I should run to store and grab a little apple juice. Didn’t see that ingredient. Have everything else. .-. Just put it on like 10 min ago.
Hi Sarah! We hope everything turned out delicious for you! Did you end up adding the apple juice?
Good, but won’t be making again. I did all the steps and used the exact ingredients, but it came out way lighter in color and didn’t thicken much. Certainly not the rich glaze the video shows. Honesty it just tastes like a healthy choice sauce. Not a bad thing, but not impressive to me.
I’m sorry to hear that you didn’t enjoy it Laura. This recipe is a very popular reader recipe and we’ve enjoyed it many times ourselves exactly as written. Thank you for trying the recipe.
I tried this recipe with chicken thighs cut into chunks and instead of bourbon and honey I used bourbon maple syrup and low sodium soy sauce. I’m not a fan of salt and this came out fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing this recipe.
You’re welcome Jody! It’s a favorite of ours for sure!
Are the directions the same if you are using an Instant Pot instead of a crock pot? Please send the answer to my email address.
Hi Elizabeth, I haven’t tried this recipe in the instant pot so I can’t say for sure. But another reader made it by putting the sauce (without the water) and chicken thighs in the instant pot on manual for 15 minutes. Then used the saute setting to thicken the sauce with the cornstarch. Let us know how it turns out for you!
In this recipe is requires a lot of sweet ingredients. Is it going to get balances out cause I don’t want to bite into sweet you know.
This recipe makes a fairly sweet sauce. You can make some adjustments to reduce the sweetness.
1. Is cider vinegar the same as apple cider vinegar?
2. What kind of apple juice for they all have a difference in sugar, pasteurized apple juice 31 gram of sugar, organic pasteurized pressed 24 gram of sugar, or from concentrate 26 gram of sugar? Because the recipe already going to have brown sugar want to make sure if apple juice sugar count, counts.
3. Which bourbon? I’m not to familiar with bourbon.
Thank you.
Ludy, I suggest apple cider vinegar. Any apple juice will work. For bourbon, I’ve used various brands based on what I have on hand and any kind will do. If you’re just using it for cooking, choose an inexpensive brand. Enjoy the recipe!
Made this for dinner a few days ago. The family loved it. I got two comments: my wife said she thought it would be great with pork chops, m y grandson said he wanted it with shrimp. I guess next time I will have to make a double batch of sauce no matter what we put it over.
This bourbon chicken was better than any I’ve ever had in any restaurant! I only changed one thing… I did use the Lite Soy sauce. I don’t eat much salt, so for me, this was perfect.
Great dish, my hubby loved it and so did I. I did add a few more ingredients, but was great
Soooo good but if you use your husbands Weller Antique 107 he will definitely get upset!! It was scrumptious!!
Yummy indeed!! Make extra so you can have it later. We had it over rice but will use pasta next time. Mmmmm good.
Does the chicken need to be thawed before going in the slow cooker?
Many readers have successfully used frozen chicken breasts in the slow cooker. I personally that them first in cold water in the sink. Let us know how it works out for you!
Amazing!
This was excellent, we followed the recipe as written. We used low sodium soy sauce and only a pinch more salt and pepper. Lunch the next day over a crunchy roll sandwich was even better. Thank you so much for publishing this, it’s a keeper
I made this for dinner and it came out really good. I did make some changes. I started with chicken thighs cut into bite size pieces and coated them with the corn starch prior to pouring in the sauce. This saved on cook time as I didn’t really want to have shredded chicken in the end. Also it saves you from doing any other additional steps. Cook time was reduced to 3 hrs and 45 min in the slow cooker on low. I know you specified not to use light soy sauce, however I used low sodium soy as this is what I had available and it still came out tasty. For those who were not sure what bourbon to use, I found a Jim Beam Bourbon whiskey nip which is 50ml and $0.99 cents in the liquor store, happens to measure 1/4 cup. So no need to purchase expensive liquor. Thanks for the recipe.
Made exactly as directed. Not sweet, fairly tasteless, looked nothing like the photo (just beige not brown). Sorry but this is a non-starter for us and will toss out the leftovers.
I’m sorry to hear that you didn’t enjoy it, and very surprised to hear that Carol. This recipe is a very popular reader recipe and we’ve enjoyed it many times ourselves. Thank you for trying the recipe.
We tried a different bourbon chicken recipe on the stove and loved it and this time we wanted to use our slow cooker and came across this recipe. We were excited to use this recipe because of all the great reviews and because we already had the ingredients :) unfortunately, we won’t be using this recipe again. I love most of the recipes I’ve tried on this website but something was off with the measurements of this recipe. Tasted nothing like any bourbon chicken we ever had before. Felt like it needed more depth (I didn’t use light soy sauce as the recipe warned) and more sugar/honey. Plus, this recipe is more like 4 big servings for dinner. I think we would’ve had a better experience using chicken thighs rather than chicken breast, as well.
Sorry that you didn’t enjoy the recipe as much as we do Bryan. The recipe does call for chicken thighs.
What brand of bourbon did you use?
I’ve used various brands based on what I have on hand and any kind will do. If you’re just using it for cooking, choose an inexpensive brand.